EXPLORATION AND VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTATION IN A LOCAL NEUROSCIENCE DATABASE

Work is currently being done by a number of groups to investigate the possibility of creating one or more neuroscience databases. These data bases could provide: (1) a means for conveying complete descriptions o f experiments; (2) a platform for virtual experiments; (3) and an inte rface where modeling and experimental results could be exchanged. This paper describes work towards creating a local database with these cap abilities by creating a set of experimental neurophysiology software t ools that are tied to a database of experiment descriptions via extern al scripting mechanisms. These tools provide a means of exploring resu lts and data that can lead to insights into the data that suggest new avenues of research. Because the scriptability of the tools allows for automation of re-analysis of the data, virtual experiments for testin g new hypotheses over large datasets becomes possible. Such virtual ex periments are particularly relevant to computational neuroscience, as they allow hypotheses generated by models to be immediately tested wit hout further collection of experimental data.